In the Darkness
by PixieKayGirl
Summary: Janeway deals with the darkness within. (TW: depression) Rating T only because of the depression content. Light (very light) J/C.


_A/N: I have dysthymia, and it's been flaring up lately. I've also been on a big Voyager kick lately, and my brain started writing little stories, projecting my own dysthymia onto Janeway. I thought I'd write one down, and found that the idea of her having dysthymia wasn't as far a stretch as I'd originally thought. The ending is something my husband does for me sometimes (though we don't go through the whole explanation of why I feel the need for it like they do here), and regardless of relationship, this seemed like the logical person to provide this for her._

Sometimes the darkness came to her.

She and the doctor had talked about this many times. The conversations were usually against her wishes, and always with the strictest confidentiality. "No, I don't mean the usual doctor-patient confidentiality. I mean the anyone-finds-out-and-Tom-becomes-the-sole-medical-personnel level of confidentiality."

Dysthymia. That's what the Starfleet psychiatrists had called it. A form of depression, but not usually a debilitating form. Always present, but she could at least act like it wasn't there. Smile. Laugh. Hustle someone at pool. And, they'd said there was a cure. If she wasn't cured they wouldn't have sent her out here.

Not precisely true, the doctor said. They had ways to manage it. That hypospray she had to use daily to balance the hormones out correctly, for instance. But there was a reason Starfleet officers had to undergo regular psych evaluations. Even something well-understood and fairly well under control could go out of control under extreme conditions. Especially something neurological.

But this was the 24th century, she'd argued. Surely medical science, with dermal regenerators and the ability to prevent most headaches and the cure for cancer, would have a cure for depression.

It wasn't that easy, was his rebuttal. Muscles and nerves and skin were all easy to fix. Even organs could be fairly easily replaced with artificial counterparts. But the brain remained something of an enigma to the medical world. They knew how to find the exact hormones that were out of balance and could do a fair amount to balance them back out, and that helped a lot. But the neural pathways got misaligned, or some small bit of hormonal requirement shifted and changed the whole balance again, and occasionally, the darkness would still come. This was part of why deep-space missions were supposed to include a counselor. Some things just couldn't be fixed with a hypospray or laser scalpel, and some things couldn't be quantified with a tricorder. Some things just had to be struggled through, talked through, wrestled with. And maybe that was how it was supposed to be. Maybe the human race couldn't continue to grow if they could hypospray away their personal demons.

So, in strictest confidence, he did the tests to find out the exact chemicals her brain wasn't making enough of, or was making too much of, and how they'd changed since entering the Delta quadrant. He'd prepared the treatments for her to do in her quarters, which she did regularly. And most of the time she was fine. But, as he'd warned, there would be triggers.

There weren't as many triggers as she would have expected. The Void had been really bad, and there were a few other times that were difficult, often relating to a loss, or a disappointment when a hope of a way home fell through. She remembered them when the darkness came. Not individually, but as one jumbled mess. The darkness was a tangled ball of her own personal void that was all connected, and all the happier times in between, the times when she could put on a happy face and act like it wasn't dwelling in her all the time, were really just the little holes that were always visible through a tangled line.

Ugh, that explanation didn't even make sense to herself. Kathryn huffed and thumped back against the bulkhead. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting there on the floor of her quarters, legs curled up to her chest, head on her knees, back against the bulkhead between her two windows. She just knew that she needed to feel the pressure on her back. Somehow, curling into herself and feeling pressure on her back was always just a little better.

Only one other person knew. He almost never knew when it happened, other than in The Void when the entire crew had known it. At least they never found out how chronic it was though. She didn't even know what had started it this time. Probably that infernal and entirely petty disagreement with Chakotay earlier.

Chakotay. She sighed and curled back into herself. Chakotay. The one person who knew. He didn't know until the Void. He didn't know during the Void. Only after, when he'd seen the effects and knew what to look for, did he realize that she wasn't always as cheerful as she liked to appear. Oh, it wasn't always there. On the good days-and she had a lot of good days, especially when the hormone therapy was working right-she could look back at her bad times and see it from the perspective of an outsider, someone who never experienced this darkness.

The grey times, the times that she could feel the depression but could ignore it, she understood both sides of herself. She remembered the lightness and she remembered the darkness. She could laugh and mean it, but when the gaiety was done and she was alone in her quarters she realized that the darkness had been there the whole time, even though it was only a little bit dark.

Grey times were most common.

The darkness came rarely, but when it came she could hardly understand the grey times, much less the light times. She had an intellectual knowledge of their having existed, but she could barely make herself care, much less figure out how to find them again. She was intellectually aware that if a red alert sounded right now, if someone called her to the bridge with a cascading systems failure, if anything happened requiring the captain's presence, she would be able to do everything she needed to, put on her Captain's Face and be the woman in charge. Because she had to. But all the darkness within her said she was useless and could do nothing.

All day, as she became increasingly aware of the darkness descending, she had felt tears piling up behind her eyes. When she and Chakotay had their stupid little argument. When she sat in her captain's chair, then in her ready room doing some work. When Chakotay came in and they made amends for their stupid little disagreement. While she was eating another one of Neelix's ridiculous concoctions. No, not ridiculous. Yes, ridiculous. Whatever. The point was, the tears were there throughout the entire, uneventful, rather run-of-the-mill day. But now, alone in her quarters, night watch safely on duty on the bridge and no one requiring her for anything at all, the tears couldn't come.

The door chime sounded. She ignored it. If it was important they would call her com badge.

It sounded again. She hugged her knees tighter to her.

"Captain?" It was his voice. She felt the tiniest little lift of her heart, but it lasted barely longer than it took the sound waves to reach her ears. He couldn't make it better, and of course he would want to. Probably with some stupid vision quest or something.

She would never call them stupid to him. She didn't think they were stupid at all. But right now she couldn't even handle the suggestion. And she didn't want to talk.

"Captain, may I come in?"

She waited. She was sure he must've left by the time she finally made up her mind and said, "Open."

A quick glance at the door revealed that, in fact, he had not left. He stepped in and the doors whooshed shut behind him, without any other crewman walking past who might see her and wonder why she sat like that. It didn't matter for him to see her. He already knew. So she dropped her head to her knees again.

He crossed to her and quietly lowered himself to the floor. "Did I do this?" he asked softly.

"No," she murmured into her knees.

"I did, didn't I?"

"No." She lifted her head and smiled a little, sniffing back the tears that still hadn't fallen. "No, Chakotay. Our disagreement wasn't your fault, just a little difference of perspective. We've had way bigger disagreements than that without it causing me to . . . plummet. And we worked that all out already. It may have been the trigger, as the doctor says, but it isn't the cause or this would be gone." She gave a dry, rather hollow-sounding laugh as she dropped her head again, not all the way to her knees, but looking that way. "No, it's my stupid brain being stupid again, with the wiring all out of whack or whatever it is."

He reached a hand out and touched her shoulder. She wanted to shrug it away but found herself leaning into it instead.

She didn't look at him as she whispered, "They wonder how I can think so fast on my feet, play the part of the tough guy or the negotiator or whatever else. They praise me for it. They don't know it's from so much practice, playing the part of a happy person almost every day of my life."

He slid his arm around her.

"Do you feel it again?" he asked. First she thought it was a ridiculous question, since obviously she felt the depression again. Then for a horrified moment she thought he was asking if she felt the feelings they'd expressed on New Earth, the ones they'd had to put aside when they returned to the ship. But thankfully he elaborated before she put her foot in her mouth. Perhaps he had realized how the question sounded. "That feeling you told me about last time, like you're coming apart and need pressure to hold yourself together? Is it there again?"

She nodded. He shifted a little closer and wrapped his arms around her.

"Chakotay-I…." She was going to protest, afraid where this could lead. He didn't give her a chance.

"Don't worry, Kathryn. You'll come through this. But you don't have to do it alone. I'm not asking for anything else, just let me hold you through this. For as long as you need, and as soon as you need me gone I'll go."

She nodded again. He was surrounding her, not only with his arms, but with the knowledge that she was not alone. Surrounding her with a little light. Not enough to illuminate her and drive the darkness away, but a little light in her darkness nonetheless.

And the tears finally began to fall. The philosophical part of her and the scientific part of her collided and she idly wondered whether the light and the tears together could create a rainbow. Though she still cried, the corner of her mouth twitched into a tiny smile, the first genuine one in longer than she'd realized.

The darkness was still there. But perhaps it was a gloaming now.


End file.
